Papers of the Kerr and Crooks Families

F This collection of one thousand, four hundred thirty-eight
manuscripts contains correspondence, bills and receipts, legal
documents, and other papers relating to the business and family
activities of Daniel H. Kerr, of Buckhead P.O., Fairfield District, and
Thomas Harrison Crooks (1823-1897) and his wife, Annie Elizabeth Green
Crooks (1831-1910). The bulk of the collection consists of legal
documents and bills and receipts for the purchase of plantation and
household supplies, sales of cotton, medical treatment of family members
and slaves, and other incidental expenses, 1801-1923. Family and
business correspondence is comprised of two hundred sixty-seven letters,
1809-1923.

Daniel Kerr apparently got his start in life as a clerk for the
wealthy and successful Yorkville merchant Robert Latta. A document
dated 4 April 1809 attests that Kerr worked in his store "for between
four and five years and I believe him to be an honest sober Young Man."
Although the collection yields little information about Kerr's life
during this period, there are receipts from the 1830s for trips to
Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Kerr may have carried with him on one of
these trips a printed schedule, April 1834, "Pecks & Wellford's Old
Southwestern or Middle Route Line of United States Mail Post Coaches."
Another item indicates that there may have been connections between Kerr
and the Mobley family. Dated 8 January 1830, the document lists the
valuation of the property of the late W[illia]m Mobley. Kerr apparently
was responsible for the custody and care of his nephew Robert Green.
Two receipts, 11 January 1838, denote payment of Robert's tuition and
books and board and washing at "Fairfield Classical M.L. School." Sarah
T. Griffith, wife of the school's headmaster, informed Kerr in a letter
of 17 July 1838 that she was acting in the place of her ill husband in
informing Kerr of the tuition due.

Among Kerr's family correspondents the most interesting letters are
those of Macon, Miss., residents John C. and Martha Boyle. In a letter
written around 1840, John Boyle explains the indebtedness that he
incurred through operation of his store and seeks relief from the
interest that he owed his uncle Daniel from whom he purchased his
inventory. John Boyle always seemed to be in some difficulty as a
business man. His letter of 12 April 1848 relates a tentative business
proposition from James R. and David Aiken, gives news of crops, and
notes that "Wiley W. Coleman is living in Winston and they say he is
indited for taken cotton from negroes..." Boyle discusses his candidacy
"for the office of circuit clerk of this county" in a letter of 17
October 1849. Boyle was still in the mercantile business in 1857 when
he wrote Kerr about his purchases of goods on a trip to the North.
Boyle was pleased with the brisk sales of the goods and also commented
on the incidence of disease among family and slaves and the cotton
market. Boyle requested that Kerr find him a "young likely negro woman
cook," but his failure to receive the money from a sale of land made
such an acquisition impossible (12 January 1859). A year later, 10
January 1860, Martha Boyle related the family's precarious financial
condition to which her husband's experiences in the mercantile business
had contributed and requested a loan from Kerr so that her husband could
"buy land & go to farming." In February, John Boyle was in
Charleston where he had been successful in purchasing goods. Boyle
noted that he was favorably impressed with the prices, the variety, and
the quality of goods that were available—"I...find all the leading
articles in Dry goods, Hardware, Saddlery, Boots & shoes as low and
on the same terms as they are in New York." The country's worsening
political crisis was addressed in a letter of 24 November 1860 in which
Boyle discussed the likelihood of secession—"No doubt now but
Mississippi will seceed about the time that So Carolina does, the Blue
Cockade is worn here by young & old." Boyle also related that he
was traveling "as agent for our factory in Choctaw County and selling
goods of my own."

In addition to bills and receipts for supplies and other expenses
necessary to the operation of a plantation, the collection contains
correspondence of Kerr's agents for the sale of his cotton. There are
ten letters, 15 October 1841 - 24 May 1856, of James Martin who
apparently operated from Columbia until 1849, when he may have relocated
to Charleston. By the fall of 1856 sales of Kerr's cotton were being
handled in Charleston by H.K. Aiken & Co., represented here by
twenty-five letters, 7 November 1856 - 20 September 1859.

The bulk of the collection's Civil War material is in the form of
bills and receipts. Two interesting documents are a list of subscribers
"for the purpose of presenting a drum and fife to the Buckhead Guards"
(26 December 1860) and a "Medical Notice" announcing the copartnership
of William Hatton and J.I. Hatton—"For those who are absent from home,
as volunteers, either in the defence of So. Ca., or the Conf. States,
they will, if called upon, during their absence, practice for their
white families gratuitously, and for their negroes at one dollar and
fifty cts. per visit, including mileage, prescription, and medicine" (14
May 1861).

The relationship between Daniel H. Kerr and Thomas Harrison Crooks
is not clearly documented in the collection. Whereas Daniel H. Kerr is
the principal individual around whom the collection revolves before the
Civil War, Thomas H. Crooks and his family are the most prominent after
the Civil War. The geography of the collection also shifts from
Fairfield County to Newberry County. The period before radical
reconstruction is highlighted in a letter, 28 July 1866, from G.H.
Zeigler to Joseph Heller, authorizing the latter to organize a company
"for the purpose of arresting Such Freedmen as are idling around the
Country without any visible means of Support, Search for Stolen property
wherever there may be good reasons to Suppose that it may be concealed
and arrest all Suspicious Characters and Such others as may be known to
have committed depredations." Crooks' activities as a planter are
documented through a number of labor contracts. There are eight
contracts between 1868 and 1880. Crooks was also an inventor of
agricultural implements, as evidenced by correspondence and other
documents dated 1885 and 1886. One such document outlines
specifications for his "new and improved combination frame for plows,
cotton seed sower[,] corn planter and grain drill, also Harrow." The
plates that originally accompanied the specifications are not present.
Another document offers an explanation of "What this Machine will do."
Letters, 1886, from the North American Patent Co. mention plans for
marketing Crooks' invention.

But, like many farmers and planters who attempted to make a living
from agriculture during the postwar period, Thomas Harrison Crooks
experienced financial difficulties. In 1875 trial justice James F.
Kilgore issued a summons to Crooks concerning the latter's indebtedness
to the Wando Mining and Manufacturing Co. And a letter of 23 July 1879
from nephew J.S.J. Suber called upon the latter to reach a settlement
with his sister in order to avoid a suit after her death.

The collection also contains a number of interesting printed items,
including Centenary Questions and Answers for the Use of the Woman's
Missionary Society of the South Carolina Conference M.E. Church South
(1884) and an undated circular advertising "A New Discovery in
Wash-Boilers" marketed by the Automatic Wash-Boiler Co., Pittsburgh, Pa.